


Backbeat on the Streets

by ohmytheon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lannisters won't look for Arya on the streets; and so the streets are where Gendry takes her. But both of them know that they can't live on the run from the Lannisters forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backbeat on the Streets

**Author's Note:**

> I filled out a prompt that involved Arya/Gendry in a Modern AU setting where they're on the run from the Lannisters, a powerful and connected gang, and how they join another gang to protect themselves. Kind of. Mostly I just played around with how I normally write and had some fun.

“We can’t survive off potato chips forever,” he tells her one night when they’re holed up in yet another shit motel.

She doesn’t respond to him out loud, but shoots him a glare from her spot next to the window as she greedily shoves her hand into the already half empty bag of chips and pulls a few out. It’s hard not to eat them all at once, so she eats each one in a deliberately slow pace, nibbling until there’s nothing left. She wants to tell him that of course they can and that he’s being stupid, but she knows he’s right. How long has it been since they had a good hot meal?

“If you just let me pickpocket, we’d have enough money to–”

“No,” he stresses out, “we can’t afford to do stupid shit like that. If we get caught, if either one of us gets arrested–”

He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. Both of them know what will happen if they get arrested. The Lannisters have the police in their pockets. Children are born with that kind of knowledge these days. And there are much worse things that going to jail. At this point, she’s thought multiple times that even jail would be okay; at least there she would be sure to have a bed and things that resemble actual food. She’s always liked junk food, unlike her big sister Sansa, but even she is growing sick of cheap knock-off sodas, drinking out of water fountains in parks, and making a dollar menu burger last two days.

Neither one of them brings up the idea of begging. She won’t do it; her pride won’t let her do it. He thinks it’s too dangerous; and besides, he doesn’t want to cop to have ever done it before. He hates seeing her like this, in a world that was once his alone, but it’s safer this way. No one will think to look for her on the streets; and he knows them well enough, even if they’re in another city. Streets are streets in the end. If you know how to navigate one, you can navigate them all. At least, that’s what he tells himself at night.

“Then don’t complain about the chips, stupid,” she finally tells him when she finishes the bag.

He’s not complaining for himself; he’s complaining for her. And they both know it, but don’t say it out loud.

* * *

Sometimes, if they’re feeling brave enough and their stomachs hurt too much to bear, they’ll find one of those homeless soup kitchens. She would never know where to find them without his help, although she hates admitting that. Every morning, she tells herself that she doesn’t need his help – that she shouldn’t have dragged him into this battle with her – but he’s all she has now until she can be with her family again. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s more or less used to living like this – that he was born to know what it was like to grow hungry to the point of madness – but it comes in handy. Now that they’re out of town, he doesn’t have to worry about being recognized. He doesn’t tell her that he used to frequent these places after his mother died when he was a child, but he doesn’t need to.

That’s how it is with them. He’ll press his lips together; and she’ll just know.

“Hell, this soup is delicious,” she says every time they find themselves squished on a bench in a kitchen, even if it tastes nowhere near as good as the soup her family’s cook used to make. She doesn’t care. It tastes like heaven to her now when the last thing she’d eaten was a day old burger from McDonald’s. “I think Gordon Ramsay himself is back there making this.”

He tries to smile, but it always comes out forced. He hates sitting across from her, seeing her in between two other men that are uncomfortably close to her, but she insists that it’s better for them tactically. That way, they’re able to view the entire room and watch all the people. Still, she lets her guard down in these places, try as she might not to. It just feels so good to sit and enjoy hot food for once. They can even get seconds if they’re lucky, but sometimes seconds hurt more because they know that they won’t be eating the next day.

“Do we have enough money or are we going to stay here tonight?” she asks.

He frowns as he digs around in his pocket, mentally counting the money without taking it out. It’s not safe to bring money out in the open. She trusts him on that one. This is his world, not hers. She still thinks that she should carry the money since she’s smaller and more difficult to catch, but he says that he’s more intimidating and less likely to try to steal from or bother. He always counts twice, just to make sure, because he’s not the best at math, not like her, and he’s still insecure about it.

When he glances up at her, she knows the answer and her heart sinks. She doesn’t want to stay here. She hates staying in homeless shelters because they’re forced to separate. Women stay on the women side and men go to the men side. They can’t claim that they’re married and everyone can tell that they’re not family. She hates to say it, but she’s grown far used to sleeping at his side to part from him. She can’t sleep when she’s not next to him and not sleeping is dangerous these days. They always have to be alert.

He stands up abruptly, having scarfed down his meal long before her; and she looks up at him. “C’mon, there’s a cheap ass motel down the street.”

She furrows her brow. “But we don’t have enough money.”

“We’ll be fine; trust me,” he simply says. “I can figure something out.” And by figure something out, she knows that means he’ll go without eating for a day or two longer, but she won’t go without food. She never does. He won’t let her, even when she tries to refuse to eat. “I bet if we pull off that you’re from an abused family story again, we can get a room for cheaper.”

She hates besmirching her family’s name like that. Her parents were far from abusive – they were loving, perfect, fantastic, and it hurts her heart so much to not be with them – but he’s right about it getting them rooms for cheaper. She’s scrawny enough to make it plausible; and she’s an even better actress to make it convincing. He always plays the poor but well-intent older boyfriend that doesn’t know what to do. She prays to God to forgive her for sullying her parents’ name, but then she’s not sure if there is a God these days. It’s not like her father cares anyways. Her father is dead. People don’t tend to care about things when they’re dead.

* * *

“We can’t go on living like this,” he says as they lie in bed.

She can hear the tired defeat in his voice; and it angers her. It’s not like she dragged him into this with her; it’s not like he even had to be with her at all. He can leave any time he wanted to, but she can’t; she’s stuck in this life until every member of the Lannisters are dead. “You don’t have to live like this,” she snaps, folding her arms across her chest and staring determinedly at the ceiling. Both of them are lying on their backs on the bed, completely straight, staring up. There’s at least a foot in between them on the bed, but even now, when she’s mad at him, she wishes he would roll over and throw his arm around her like he does when he’s sleeping and can’t control what he’s doing. He slept on the floor only once until she kicked him and made him get on the bed with her. There was no sense in not using a bed when they got one. “You can go home.”

But even before she says the words, she knows it’s not fair, knows it’s not even true, knows the words will sting him and he won’t do anything about it. He never does. He just lets her rage at him, sometimes to the point where she’ll beat her little fists on his hard chest, and he won’t stop her or anything. She’s never quite sure if she feels better afterwards, but she tells him that she does. Except now, she doesn’t feel good about what she’s said. She feels guilty and bites her lip, holding back apologies because she never apologizes, not like him.

“You know I can’t do that,” he finally says in a quiet voice.

She doesn’t ask him why or why not. For some reason or another, the Lannisters have marked him for dead too. At first, she thought it was because of his friendship with her, but they were able to rule that out a long time ago. It has something to do with his past – a past that he can’t even remember ever having because he’s only ever been no one. He’s never really had a home besides; and she’s mad at herself for saying something like that. Going home would just mean going back to the Landing City, but he’s got nowhere else specific to go, not like her northern home. Even if he did have one, he will never leave her side, not ever. He’s all she has now; and he knows it. She’s not his responsibility, but she is now, the first responsibility he’s ever really had that was his own except for that random scholarship to a body shop school.

“When we get to my home,” she tells him, “you can stay with me.” He turns his head to give her a questioning look, but she doesn’t look at him. This idea has been turning around in her head for weeks. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it’s only fair that he stay with her family. “We’ve got some spare bedrooms in our place that are never used; and you could set up home there.”

“I don’t know…”

“Don’t you want to?” She looks at him now, almost pleading with him. She can’t sleep with him not around. She can barely eat these days. She doesn’t want to think of a life without him now because he’s the only one she has left. What if he’s all that she’d ever have left? “It’d be nice, I promise.”

Even in the dark, she can see a sheepish smile on his face. “I don’t think your older brother would be too peached about it.”

She punches him lightly in the arm. “It won’t matter what Robb thinks. He won’t be able to say no.”

“You are very persuasive.”

“Of course I am,” she says proudly. “I’m clever, unlike some people that are too bull-headed to think things through.” Before he can even begin to protest, she scoots over to him, so that her body is pressed up against his side. That immediately shuts him up. His body tenses against hers, but she ignores it, even as she lays her head on top of his muscular arm. “Now go to sleep. No sense in wasting a bed talking when we can use it sleeping.”

She goes to sleep before he does, as always. She’s able to listen to every creak and sound before drifting off. The way she sleeps, so lightly, if anything were to happen, she’d be up on her feet in half a second. He always struggles to fall asleep though, even when she’s next to him. He stays awake just a bit longer, watching, waiting, as if Lannister men would burst through the door the moment he caved in to exhaustion. She used to be like that, back in the beginning, when her nightmares were so bad that she’d wake up smacking and kicking him. Now he’s the restless one. It’s like they take turns. 

Of course, it’s even more difficult for him to sleep with her so close to him. Normally, they keep a distance from each other, at least until they fall asleep. He’ll apologize when he wakes up and his arm is over top of her. One time, he found his hand sprawled against her breast and he about near pissed himself. As time went on though, they grew more comfortable with each other. She used to laugh when he wore his whole outfit to bed, long-sleeve shirt, jeans, and socks when she was comfortable enough to at least sleep in her tank top. Nowadays, he gives her his shirt to wear; and he sleeps in his boxers and undershirt. It never ceases to startle him when she walks out of the bathroom wearing his shirt and her panties, her pants discarded a different place in the room each time. Still, they keep their distance, except for a few nights when she cuddles close to him and, in her sleep, practically demands that he hold her.

They’re all they’ve got. It’s only natural.

“We can’t go on living like this,” he mutters to himself when he looks down at her and feels just how thin she is against him.

* * *

It’s her idea to join some stupid gang. He personally hates the idea – hates everything about the idea, the people involved in the idea, and all of the stuff in between – but she makes the snap judge decision and without further ado, they’re basically-sort-of-official members of the BWB gang. Their kick is that they’re kind of like the Robin Hood of gangs. They steal from other gangs and give back to the people that those big gangs beat on. She loves it, of course, and is immediately taken by it.

He’s still stuck thinking it’s a terrible idea, especially since they promised not to break any laws. Being in a gang kind of eliminates staying off the radar completely and not breaking rules.

“They’re fighting against the Lannisters!” she says excitedly. “The very people we’re running from!”

Yes, yes, he knows. The leader of the gang, some unassuming yet startling tough bloke named Beric is ruthless when it comes to his fight against the unjust. It’s been rumored that he’s killed members of the Lannister gang himself. They’ve got this whole thing where they catch high-ranking members of other gangs, put them to a mock-trial, and then fight them to the death. It’s a brutal sort of thing that he can’t even imagine but must deal with anyways. It’s all sorts of tiring.

“What if they get mixed up with the police? What then?” That’s what happens to gangs. They break the law; they get in trouble with the police. He likes these people well enough, but he doesn’t trust them. The thing about coming from the streets is that you know all about snitches. She doesn’t know anything about that; all she knows about is honor and loyalty. There isn’t room for shit like that on the streets though and especially not in gangs, even if they say there is. The BWB is a strange bunch mixed with a potent combination of honor, justice, and batshit craziness. It’s a cocktail for disaster.

“We can trust them,” she insists. When he doesn’t believe her, she points at one of the men in the corner of the room, laughing with a few others. He looks harmless enough, even innocent, compared to some of the harder guys in this group. “He used to work for my father. He knows me and says that they’re trying to avenge my father and the wrongs the Lannisters have done us.”

He chews his lip, looking at the other man, but knows that no matter of distrust will change her mind. When she’s set in her ways, she’s damn well set in her ways, like cement. “Well, if they try to do something stupid, like outright fight the Lannisters, we’re not being a part of it. And I’m not robbing anyone either.”

“We can do other things, I promise.”

She could promise all she wants, but he knows that if it comes down to it, the choice will not be hers. That’s how gangs work. It’s why he never joined one when he was young and foolish. Nearly all the people in this gang are foolish, some around their age. There’s Anguy, a pool shark that knows how to hustle people than any car salesman; and there’s Ned, stupid Ned that comes from a family just as well-off as hers but chooses to hang out with these hoodlums because he wants to do something to “help the community” or some bullshit like that.

Gods, he hates this whole thing and he wants to leave.

But then she curls up next to him at night, in a little room in a house that serves as the BWB’s base, and she says things like, “Don’t leave me, ok?” and goddamnit, he can’t just leave her. He never wants to leave her; and she doesn’t want to leave him.

And he knows that they’re living better now than they ever were when they were on the street. He could never make enough money doing odd jobs that gave him cash under the table; and she grew wary of all the girls she saw on the street corners, thinking about her future. They’re eating real food now, on a daily basis; and they’ve got protection. Hell, Lem even gave him a gun to carry under his shirt, a real gun, and he feels like he can finally protect her for real. Sure, if Lannisters bust in now, no gun is going to save him, not when his shot is still kind of shit no matter how much practice he does. She’s so much better at it, but they still won’t let her carry, and she’s mad as hell about that.

She looks happier than she’s been in months; and he can’t just take her away from that. He likes seeing her happy, likes her smile, her laugh, and the way she bounds around with lighter steps than ever before. It’s only a matter of time before this all ends, before this gang and the Lannisters bash too hard, too much, but he stays because she wants him to stay. He stays for the food, for the bed, for the everything he never knew he missed.

They’re safe and they can live like this.

At least for now.


End file.
